


they have to come back

by strawberry_sky



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Light Angst, Separation Anxiety, The Happy Fun Ball of Tricks, the mighty nein love each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-21 07:40:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18139322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberry_sky/pseuds/strawberry_sky
Summary: Beau had no idea that touching the sphere in the dragon's cave in the middle of the Happy Fun Ball of Tricks would be enough to activate it and pull her out of the battle. If she had, she would have waited and made sure that everyone else was okay. Instead she's out here in the middle of the ship, useless, with no idea what's going on, and more and more time just keeps passing by.





	they have to come back

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't been able to stop thinking about this ever since Matt confirmed that the time dilation meant that Beau arrived minutes before everyone else. We're mostly following canon here, with some minor but necessary changes b/c i said so. 
> 
> Big thanks to CritRoleStats for their very helpful battle breakdown, https://www.critrolestats.com/blog/2018/12/20/monster-analysis-young-blue-dragon?rq=45.

Beau’s fingers have barely grazed the glowing blue sphere when she feels a tug in her stomach and a rushing in her ears and in the next instant, her boots hit wood. 

She quickly takes in her surroundings, adrenaline keeping her senses crystal-clear. She’s back in the familiar cabin of the ship. There is no dragon, no fire elemental, no cave. The Happy Fun Ball of Tricks is sitting behind her, resting on a chair like it’s a pedestal. And Yasha is sitting in another chair in the corner, startling awake and staring at Beau with her mouth slightly open. 

Beau feels a wave of relief. The sphere  _ is  _ an exit, and they  _ have  _ activated it, and they’re  _ home _ \--well, as much of a home as the Ball Eater has become. 

The relief is replaced almost immediately by a crashing tsunami of panic. Beau spins around, staring at the Happy Fun Ball. The others are still in there. And she’s out here. 

“Fuck!” She’s still clenching her fists, still flooded with all the energy of battle. But what’s she supposed to do, punch the stupid inter-dimensional sphere? 

“Beau.” A quick glance over her shoulder tells her Yasha is standing, one hand on the hilt of her greatsword, looking more shaken then usual. “What the hell is going on.” A calm statement rather than a question. 

“It’s a portal, there’s a dragon, a big fucking dragon.” How long as she been here? Ten seconds? Caduceus and Fjord had been running in her direction, they must have seen her go, they should have followed her, they should be here any second--

“A dragon?” Yasha’s standing beside her now. “But where did you go, where have you been?” 

“I don’t know, it was some weird shit, it was--” It’s too much to explain. Beau bites the inside of her lip, hard, and stares at the ball as if the force of her gaze itself will materialize her friends beside her. 

She’s counting the seconds now.  _ Eighteen, nineteen, twenty.  _ Twenty seconds in a room with a dragon. Caleb and Nott hadn’t even been there. She pushes away the horrible thought that the sphere was one-use-only, that she’d somehow brought its only power with her. 

_ Twenty-four, twenty-five.  _ Maybe they were just grouping up, collecting,  _ waiting  _ for each other, like she should have done, like she would have done if she’d known.  _ Come on come on come on.  _

_ Thirty.  _

“Fuck!” Beau drives her fist into the side of the ship, splintering the wood a little bit.

“What  _ happened _ ?” says Yasha, more urgently, stepping toward Beau, one hand reaching out while the other stays ready to draw her sword. 

“I  _ left  _ them,” says Beau, hating how strangled her voice sounds, hating Yasha’s gentle touch at her elbow, hating most of all the emptiness of this room as her friends are being torn apart by a monstrosity of scales and teeth. “We were fighting a dragon, and Jester and Fjord activated these ball things, and I went to see if I could get us back but instead I just touched it and right away I was  _ here _ . But they should have seen me go, they were only a few steps away, they should have been right behind me.” 

Beau’s trying not to imagine the worst. Her friends are strong and capable. If Beau had truly taken the only exit, maybe they’d managed to find another part of the cave, to hide. But she can still smell the sulfur. She can still see the dragon looming over Fjord with that hungry look in its eyes, can still see it unleashing a torrent of lightning at Jester. She can still see the whirling fire elemental--which, she suddenly realizes, is now out of her control, and poses as much of a danger to her friends as it does to the dragon. 

This realization, that her own stupid choice may have killed them, is too much, and Beau sinks to the ground with a groan. She presses her back against the wood, trying to ground herself in something that feels real. Nothing else does. She can’t have lost them like this _.  _

Beau can barely bring herself to look up at Yasha. When she does, Yasha is standing perfectly still, jaw set, fists clenched. She squeezes her eyes tightly closed, and Beau can see her lips moving, uttering silent prayers or curses or both. 

Beau remembers Yasha at Molly’s grave, screaming to the sky and then stalking off toward the horizon. Selfishly, she’s glad that they’re stuck here on a boat. If the others are really…well. Beau doesn’t want Yasha to leave again. 

“I’m sorry,” says Beau. “I didn’t mean to leave.” 

After a moment, Yasha sits down next to her with a heavy sigh. “It’s not your fault,” she says. 

Beau just shakes her head, staring at her useless hands. 

“At least  _ you  _ made it,” says Yasha. “We didn’t know where you all had gone. I’ve been down here for most of it, keeping an eye on this ball thing. I hoped you’d come back, but after a week, it was getting hard to believe--” 

_ Wait _ . 

Beau’s head shoots up. “A week?”

“Well, maybe six days, it’s been hard to keep track--” 

“Yash, it’s only been a few hours!” 

The two of them stare at each other for a moment as they both come to the same conclusion. 

“But that means--” Yasha starts.

“The timing is off!” Beau’s already jumping to her feet. “Time passes slower in there!” 

“For them it’s only been a few seconds!” 

“And they might be fine!” says Beau, crossing the distance to the Happy Fun Ball and dropping to her knees beside it. “They might still be coming!” 

Beau can feel her heartbeat pounding in her ears. She feels Yasha’s hand drop onto her shoulder and she covers it with her own, both of them gripping each other a little too tight. Beau sends up desperate prayers to the Knowing Mistress, to the Wildmother, to Yasha’s Stormlord, to the Traveler, to anyone who might be listening.  _ They have to come back. They have to come back.  _

They hang there in the terrifying silence for ten seconds that feel like ten minutes. 

Then the Happy Fun Ball flashes with blue light, and Beau finally remembers how to breathe.

She jumps back, nearly crashing into Yasha as the thin frame of Caduceus Clay unfolds itself in the space. The tall firbolg straightens up, blinking at them, face slowly breaking into a smile. “Oh, good. We’re back.” 

“You made it!” says Yasha. 

“Of course I did,” says Caduceus, as if confronting a blue dragon is something he does every day. 

His even tone helps Beau finds her voice. “Something weird’s going on with the time. It passes slower out here than it does in there.” 

Caduceus nods thoughtfully as he takes this in. “You must have had a very tense few minutes.” 

For some reason, this statement brings a lump to Beau’s throat. She doesn’t have time to dwell on it, however, because there’s already another flash of blue light and then Fjord is standing there, falchion gripped in his hand, the wild look of battle still in his eyes. 

He takes in his surroundings and lets the falchion drop to hang loosely at his side as he blows out a long breath of air. “ _ Fuck _ . Okay. Hi, Yasha.” 

“There’s something weird with the time,” says Yasha. “You’ve been gone for a week.” 

Fjord glances over his shoulder at the Happy Fun Ball. “So--” 

“I’ve been out here for like five minutes,” Beau cuts in. Maybe it hasn’t actually been that long, but it’s felt longer. “Is everyone else okay?”

“Well, I mean, relatively,” says Fjord. “Caleb and Nott showed up, Caleb was zooming toward me when I hit the sphere. I think Twiggy’s hiding somewhere in there, and--wait. Where the hell is Jester?” 

“You  _ left  _ her?” says Beau, looking accusatorily at Fjord and Caduceus, who gives a confused shrug. “After she got hit with that lightning?” 

“Fuck.” Fjord closes his eyes and leans his head back. “It was so crazy in there, she must have been blinking out like I was, we must have missed each other.” 

“I’m sure she’ll be fine,” says Caduceus, but even he looks worried. “Caleb and Nott--”

There’s a pop and another flash and Caleb is there, his momentum carrying him forward a few steps right into Yasha, who quickly steadies him. 

“Okay, okay, okay,” says Caleb as he lets Yasha stand him back on his feet. “Okay, good! We are back.” 

He casts a worried glance at the Happy Fun Ball. “Nott was shooting it, but she should be coming any moment.” 

“Something’s fucked with the time,” says Beau, just as Fjord and Yasha start to offer their own simultaneous explanations. 

Caleb manages to take them all in, and his eyebrows lift with interest. “The  _ time _ , really? So it is slower inside the pocket dimension than out? That is incredibly…”

For a moment, Beau thinks they’re going to lose his focus, but then he frowns and casts a quick glance around the room. “Where is Jester?” 

“We don’t know,” says Fjord darkly. “And she was hit pretty bad.” 

“ _ Scheisse, _ ” Caleb murmurs. “I didn’t even see her.” 

There’s a moment of silence. Beau knows they’re all picturing the same thing: Nott, Jester, and little Twiggy, by themselves against a dragon and a fire elemental.

“They’ll be fine, right?” Fjord ventures. “They just need to get to the sphere, surely…” His voice trails off, and all five of them fall silent. 

Beau can’t stop picturing Jester, by herself at the end of that hallway, desperately holding up her shield against the crackling lightning. If she’s down, and Nott has no way to help her--

Beau glances over to Caleb, who is anxiously rolling a piece of copper wire between his fingers, and at Fjord, who is holding the falchion so tightly that his knuckles have gone a paler shade of green. Beau briefly wonders who of the three of them will blame themselves the most if Nott and Jester don’t come back. 

Caduceus steps up beside her. He doesn’t say anything, just squeezes her shoulder and then moves to stand between Fjord and Caleb. Yasha is standing on her other side, arms folded across her chest, dichromatic eyes fixated on the Happy Fun Ball, whose name has never felt less fitting. 

They breathe together. Every heartbeat is a prayer. The time stretches. Seconds. Minutes. Hanging in the space between reunion and disaster, not realizing how much you love someone until you might have lost them.

They’re all so focused on the sphere that the light is nearly blinding. Nott is stumbling toward them, still smouldering slightly, crossbow dangling loosely in her hand. She’s only taken a couple of steps when she drops to her knees, her other hand pressed against her shoulder. Nott smells like gunpowder and sulfur, she is covered in burns and blood, but she is  _ alive  _ and Caleb is already kneeling beside her murmuring rapid-fire Zemnian curses and apologies. Caduceus gently nudges Caleb aside, hand already glowing with healing magic. 

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” says Nott, though she doesn’t look okay, and she accepts the healing Caduceus offers. She looks around at the rest of them and wipes one hand across her face. “Dragons are fucking big!” 

“I know, right?” says Beau, because it’s true, they’re so much bigger than you ever imagine. 

“Are you feeling better?” Caduceus asks, one large hand still enveloping Nott’s entire shoulder. 

“Did you kill it?” Yasha asks at the same time. 

The question that takes precedence, however, is Fjord’s, a low and trembling “Jester?” 

And the answer doesn’t come from Nott, but from a flash of light and the sudden appearance of Jester, light on her feet but almost as burned and bruised as Nott. She looks around the cabin, lets out a breath that sounds more like a sob, and buries her face in her hands. 

“Aww, Jessie...” Beau’s not even sure what she’s trying to say. She presses the back of her hand to her mouth.  _ They’re here. They’re alive. They’re back.  _

After that, a lot happens all at once. Caleb refuses to let go of Nott’s arm, even when Jester drops to her knees and pulls Nott into a hug. Fjord finally dismisses his falchion and steps back, running his hands through his hair. Caduceus heals everyone he can touch. Yasha smiles. 

Beau quickly explains the time dilation. “So, I don’t know what happened to Twiggy--”

“She was hiding!” says Jester, looking up at Beau, starting to sound a little more steady. “She was hiding super well, I didn’t even know where she was!” 

“Then she might still be--” The sphere seems to have a sense of dramatic timing, because Beau’s not even done with her sentence when there’s a flash and a pop and the little halfling girl is standing there with her shortbow and a big grin. 

“Guys! I did it! I killed the dragon, all by myself!” Twiggy, who looks stunningly unharmed, flings out her arms in triumph. 

There’s a moment of silence.

Nott lifts an eyebrow. “Did you really?”

“I really did,” says Twiggy softly. 

Caduceus glances over from where he’s been carefully inspecting to make sure that the fire on Jester’s clothes is really and truly out. His eyes flick up and down Twiggy’s small frame. “ _ Goddamn _ ,” he says, and anything that could get that kind of language out of Caduceus is enough for Beau to believe that maybe the hafling is telling the truth after all. 

There’s footsteps on the stairs toward the cabin. It seems they’ve finally made enough noise to alert the rest of the crew. But the Mighty Nein are safe, and they are together, and they are alive. 

Beau finally relaxes. She lets a smile spread across her face. Across the room, she makes eye contact with Yasha, who softly smiles back. 

“How about if we try to avoid just touching things that might teleport us in the future,  _ ja _ ?” says Caleb weakly, glancing over at Fjord. 

“Yup,” says Fjord, who is leaning against the cabin wall, carefully watching Jester. “I mean, I make no promises, but I think that might be a good idea.” 

Caduceus straightens up, brushing the dirt and soot off his pants. “Who wants dinner?” 

“I think it might be around dawn,” Yasha points out. “It’s been a week, remember?” 

Caduceus nods. “Who wants breakfast?” 

“I do,” says Beau. She reaches down and helps Jester up. “Let’s get out of this damn room.” 

 


End file.
